2026-01-27

Waves of Chess on Steam

Hello and happy January, I hope your year is off to a great start! We launched our very first Steam game Waves of Chess. It's been a very busy month but it's also been very inspiring to see how many people have played it and enjoyed it!

The game started as part of the Ludum Dare game jam #55 back in April 2024. The original jam idea was a collection of two different ideas. Smaller boards progressively getting larger, and cards that impacted both the board and the pieces. Allowing piece upgrades and fun effects.

The jam runs for 72 hours and I'm still surprised how much I was able to implement in that time. The bones of that build survived across two different rebuilds, but some of the design ideas didn't carry over. These ideas are in our back pocket for a potential update with a new mode; because they didn't feel essential to the core Waves of Chess identity.

We learned a lot from taking a jam idea to full release. And in releasing a Steam game, also a ton about how the Steam process works. The month before release definitely saw the most learnings (and crunchings) that will definitely come to use in our future releases.

We had very few expectations for the game but the small ones we did have were absolutely blown away by the support and reception. For a game with no marketing budget, and just word of mouth we are very pleased with the results!

We currently have two planned updates coming (v1.1 and v1.2), aimed at releasing across 2026. If you have any feedback feel free to leave it on the Steam discussions board.

For now we are shifting gears back into our second (and much bigger) game Faded Cove. It also got started during Ludum Dare 55 and has a target launch of Summer 2026. This will be available to wishlist soon!

Thank you to our family, friends, beta testers, and community at large for supporting our first release, we're really excited to keep going with future updates and of course, our next games!

- Joel

p.s.
Andddddd we may (or may not) have prototyped our third game since the Waves of Chess launch, but that isn't quite ready to share yet ;) It's another new rebuild of an old game of ours that never quite made it to Steam, but it's coming! - Sarah

2025-12-27

Play on itch.io

Merry Christmas and (almost) Happy New Year! The holidays are upon us and what does that mean? FREE TIME! (maybe) (sort of) (who knows)

I like to game jam in December, to see if I can challenge myself and the skills I gained over the years. I don't do it every single year and I don't even always get a workable game at the end, but it's always fun.

This year, I decided to game jam alone, which I'm dubbing Amusing Noodle Games VERY FIRST Winter Game Jam! Next year I really hope to get more people to join in and for the second Winter Jam there will be more than one entry! (:

I made a game about packing packages into a truck because it seemed appropriate for the month of December. I’ve made similar games before so the graphics were easy. I made some basic presents, basic ribbons, a few different wrapping paper designs and then put them all together with different colours to randomize presents. The approach worked pretty well and it gave a pretty wide range of gifts that looked somewhat Christmas-y.

The truck itself was also pretty easy, it was just a simple grid in the back. Gifts could be placed into open spaces but could only be picked back up if there was nothing on top! Visually, I added a bunch of cute Christmas decorations that were unlockable via a store in between rounds. This was actually mostly an afterthought so I quickly drew the decorations but I think they still turned out pretty well!

I spent more time than I should have on the wheels, making them cute and making sure they rotated, only to have them barely be perceptible during the animation, but it's fine.

Overall it took about 5 days, but I was also getting other stuff done during this time, so a pretty quick jam! But also longer than my usual jams, which are about 3 days.

There are so many more fun little features I managed to add, like screen shaking for heavy presents, fun “weather” animations with the snow, the shop and other small things. Feel free to try it out if you want to see!

And as with all of my game jams, they either turn out way too easy or way too hard. After 5 days of packing trucks in panic mode, I apparently got pretty good at the game, and it ended up being much too hard. Because I didn’t want it to be too easy… of course. Maybe one day I’ll update it to add a difficulty setting.

Until then, enjoy packing packages! Play on itch.io

- Sarah

2025-11-27

We travelled to Montreal to go to MIGS, it was late fall so of course the snow hit shortly after arriving. Although the snow only made it more picturesque and it was beautiful the first day. It was a bit of a struggle the next morning when we had to walk to the conference in the snow but luckily we had registered the night before so we were able to walk right in! This was our first event as a studio and personally my first conference like this. It was a great experience and I loved the whole thing.

We got to stay in a beautiful hotel in the old part of the city, so walking out into the sights was just a footstep away. So of course we spent some time walking around to see the old buildings and check out the ferris wheel on the horizon (of course).

We had our own table setup in a booth with the other studios from our area! It was great to have several other studios to hang out with and have around, we were able to make a promo video that had all of our games and projects in it and it felt VERY OFFICIAL. We also had our very first logo printed out on the wall and given that I had only drawn it a few days before sending it over, suddenly all the flaws came forward, but it was okay enough for a version 1.0 of our logo!

I learned a lot about our physical promo materials, we had some signs and graphics that I built in preparation. We had wooden table signs and were able to put promo for both of our upcoming games! We had several stickers, some that we already had from previous projects and new ones with our studio logo and we put together lots of sticker sets and gave them out to anyone who wanted them. I know that stickers don't mean a ton, but I personally love getting stickers and putting them on things, so I loved passing them out!

There were a lot of booths and tables for meeting up with people, and we did a lot of that as well! Since we had our own booth, people were able to meet with us directly at our spot, which was great. We were in the VIP area but there were a few other areas, one for Indie Devs (which we also are!) and one for the content of the conference, lots of panel talks.

There were three different stages for talks and across the two days we went to all three. Several of the speakers got delayed or cancelled due to the snow at the beginning but there was still some really interesting stuff to listen to. One day it would be super cool to talk at a conference myself!

The Indie zone was really cool, lots of studios had game demos set up to play right in the room. The energy there was chaotic but vibrant and filled with interest. I saw several games myself that I already wishlisted and can't wait to see the release of! Waves of Chess is available for wishlist and it was during the conference as well, and everyone was so supportive about it, it felt nice to feel like a part of the bigger, and more professional game development community.

We learned a bit (or a lot) about how to network with other companies, people and opportunities and it was fun! We met a lot of really fun people and made lots of new contacts (if you're someone we met, hi!) and I can't wait until the next one.

We gained some XP and I'm excited to gain some more!

- Sarah

2025-10-27

Happy Autumn!

The leaves have been changing colours outside and we've been changing things inside! The studio has been working hard preparing our VERY FIRST Steam Page Launch! Alongside working on our upcoming game Faded Cove. We finished most of the production of the game back in September for Waves of Chess, THE VERY FIRST GAME! But building the game for different platforms took a little longer to put together than we anticipated. With plans in hand, we set to work preparing to launch on Steam, with a demo version available on itch.io in the meantime.

Unfortunately at the end of September I had to go to the doctor, to attempt to figure out some issues that had been happening since the summer. October was filled with appointments, talking to doctors and waiting to see test results. I still haven't solved the problem, but I am determined to figure it out. However because of that, we didn't make as much progress towards our Steam pages as we would have liked. But that won't stop us!

Even with our many setbacks, we have been working as much as possible towards the end goal. The Waves of Chess Steam page will launch on Friday, November 7th! Since this our first adventure with Steam, we are a bit unsure what to expect fully. And also SUPER EXCITED to see how things go! Initially our goal was to release Waves of Chess in November but we pushed the dates back a bit to give ourselves more time. With all the sickness and doctors, the extra time felt needed but that just means extra polish time as well!

This past month has also been my first attempts at logo creation and video editing. I made a logo for our studio and while it has some more work needed, it's a pretty good start. I have found myself using a new motto to get through, "it's good enough!" and not in a way where we are just scraping by, but in a way that helps escape the danger of perfectionism. Waiting until your game is perfect, could very well be the death of your game. Put it out there! Once it's good enough, don't wait for perfection!

I also dipped my toes into creating promotional material for printing. We have some events coming in the future that we want to be prepared for! We got some 5x7 prints and 8x11 posters to show off in style! It was fun but a little overwhelming at first. But after several nights of work, I noticed some improvements in my output. While my first attempts are not the cleanest or most stylish, they felt 'good enough' for now. A version 1.0. And even though each part needs a bit of work, once everything is together it feels really good!

The reward for all the hard work this month, getting to see a preview of our new Steam page! Seeing Waves of Chess among other steam games in our library was really satisfying and motivating. It was the push we needed to finish things off strong and get the game released!

- Sarah

2025-09-27

Brain squeak.

September was a lot. And I mean a lotttt. We FINISHED our FIRST game! Waves of Chess is complete! COMPLETE! It feels great to say, and although I'm sure we will still find some bugs and issues (as we always do), this has been a long time coming now. We started development during Ludum Dare in the spring of 2024, with no real intentions of turning it into a "real" game. After feedback from other jammers, it was clear that this game was fun. So we decided to roll with it and continue development. Alongside the other game jam game entry from the weekend Faded Cove, which is a much longer and bigger single player experience for steam, COMING SOON!

For the last month Faded Cove has had to sit on the sidelines and watch as we cross the finish line, dragging Waves of Chess with us. While we may be tired now after the crunch, I know that the excitement will kick in once we've had more sleep. The feeling of finally finishing a game isn't exactly new to us. We HAVE released games before but never like this. Not a game as polished and well done as this one. Our previous games aren't online anymore, due to deals outside of our control but that's okay because we have picked up and started again! The sting of having our previous games taken down hasn't fully gone away yet but we have plans to re-release those games whenever we are able to re-make them. Since they were made in Unity and we use Godot now, some refactoring is necessary but we assure you, they're coming!

I've had a lot of nights with very little sleep over the last few weeks, working until the sunrise many different days. Because once the sun rises, it's daytime again. But it's all worth it, all the hard work and lack of rest lead to a finished game, arguably one of the most satisfying accomplishments. We may have finished the game, but now the hard part arrives, selling it. I have always loved marketing, but indie game marketing is a thorny field to cross and I'm still learning how best to navigate it.

With luck, we will have more games releasing soon. Our early feedback for Waves of Chess has been very positive and very motivating! Thank you to anyone who has played the game, it means the world to us! <3

- Sarah

2025-08-27

Play on itch.io

Happy August, summer has been flying by!

Not only has August been full of sunny days, heat waves and working until the sun goes down...and also comes back up. It was also time for the GMTK Game Jam 2025! This was our very first game jam as a studio, and also our first ever GMTK game jam! Here I was, working on a major refactor of my main project and feeling like time is running out in every direction. So when I heard about a new game jam, my first thought was *I don't possibly have time for a game jam right now*. And my second thought was, *wellllll, what if I just check out the theme to see...* Turns out the theme was really good, it was 'Loop' and I gave myself a time limit of 1 hour to come up with a feasible idea. If I couldn't come up with a good idea, I wasn't going to jam.

A few minutes passed and I had an idea! My main game already involves a lot of cooking elements, so I already knew I wanted to make a game about food. And the second thing I wanted was the game to be a single screen. Something really simple and very small scoped, so that I could still get other stuff done during the timeframe. The initial idea was to have a never ending loop of making sandwiches to order. Starting with a level 1 sandwich and when you mastered making it, you would get to move up to level 2 sandwiches and so on. Going from jam to peanut butter and jam, to a BLT etc

There would also be 3 stages to each sandwich, toasting the bread, preparing the filling and then putting the top piece of bread on. I had a toaster in mind, to put the bread into and the player would choose how long to toast it, but that felt boring so later the toaster turned into a blow torch, for (much) more efficient toasting. I also thought that just placing a final piece of bread would be boring too, so I added a toothpick topper to place. Based on the desired sandwich output, the player would need to pick the correct topper to place.

With the idea being that each round, a sandwich order would come in, and the player would build it. Get scored and if it was perfect, move on to the next type. With each round of each sandwich being a bit variable. For example, 50% toasted with 50% of strawberry jam and 50% of blueberry jam with a strawberry topper.

In the end, we mostly achieved the goal. I worked on the game from Wednesday evening until Saturday as best I could outside my other work. Joel and I worked together all Saturday and Sunday morning to finish the game off and polish it! Along the way, as with any game jam, some ideas had to be cut. Sandwich levels, out. Custom toasted levels, out. Choosing a topper, out.

Now every sandwich needed to be 100% toasted for perfection, and the final topper just automatically chose the correct type. Time was becoming an issue and sacrifices must be made (to the goddess) if we wanted to be finished on time, without bugs. So the final idea/game was an endless loop of making jam sandwiches. Each sandwich would vary how much of each jam type it wanted, and if you could perfectly do all three stages, you won the game! So we only managed to get one stage of the sandwich in, but it worked out okay. We had to really scale the difficulty up so that the game wasn't just immediately over. In turn, it was really difficult and not many people managed to perfect their sandwich making skills.

What was the biggest technical issue?

This jam actually ran very smoothly. The very initial idea for the game, was spreading jam on toast. So that was the first thing I implemented, and it was a bit janky but it worked exactly as I imagined. In real life, jam is wonky and you can't just evenly spread jam out very easily. I tried my best to replicate that and the feeling of spreading a new type of jam over an existing one. When they overlap it's a bit difficult to tell how much of each jam is on the bread, which is part of the challenge that makes it fun.

Toasting the bread became the most difficult part to implement. Using a shader to mask out the toasted layer was easy enough, but getting the bread to actually LOOK toasted was another problem all together. It was hard to get it to look toasted and also burnt, but not too burnt. In the end I was happy with the result even if it wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

The final stage of the game, seemingly the easiest, is also the hardest to complete. But only on mobile. Due to a small (almost) bug, but not quite a bug which I'll get to, the third stage was not possible on mobile. We built the game for PC, with mobile in mind but we had forgotten to fully test the game on mobile because it just wasn't the focus. Our game almost worked all the way on mobile, but not quite. Maybe next time!

I focused a lot on polishing this game jam, to try and have a neatly wrapped experience with no bugs. I think that I delivered on that goal, and I'm proud of us for what we created across 4 days! And in the end, the ratings showed that our hard work paid off!

Out of ~9600 entries, we placed #243(4.4/5) for artwork, making it one of my (personal) best game jams ever visually! I have been making the sprites for my games for a decade but I would never call myself an artist, although maybe that might need to change! Thanks for reading, and until next month!

- Sarah

2025-07-27

Hi everyone, Sarah here!

Happy Birthday Amusing Noodle Games! This is our very first month as a new game development studio! We have been working hard for a long time to get up and running. We've been developing games since 2013, with our very first game jam in Halifax. That night walking home, I knew that my dream was to make games, it was our dream together.

We made our first java game in February 2014 and quickly realized that game engines were our jam. Unity was a hot new trend back then, and we spent years making games with it! In 2023 we made the switch to Godot and it's been amazing! The engine is great, it took a few months to a year to feel fully comfortable with my projects, but now that I'm there I feel like I can do whatever I want again.

I first realized I wanted to make games when I was in middle school and visited a game development studio in Charlottetown. Since then I've wanted to be a part of the game development world.

We made our first game in 2013 and got hooked, and now here we are over a decade later! Amusing Noodle Games has a lot of ideas and two games coming soon! With many more prototypes lurking in the shadows.

I'll sign off with a quote from Joel after asking him, what are you most excited for over the next year? -->

"What gamer hasn't eaten a cup of noodles while playing their favourite game? I'm excited to release some games that capture that feeling!" - Joel

We will check back in next year! And also again much sooner, until next time. BYE